The Great Revival
by ladycordelia17
Summary: When the caravan from Tipa comes to Mount Vellenge, will they make their final stand against the miasma? And what will be their rewards for bringing about the end of the darkness? Rated for safety; rating may change. Chapter 10: The Battle of Alfitaria.
1. The Decision

_Disclaimer: I do not own_ Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles_ or any characters or locations within, only the names of the made-up Tipa caravanners and their families._

**The Decision**

It stood before them, towering and ominous, even more so than the miasma stream that the caravan from Tipa had crossed to reach it.

"Mount Vellenge," breathed Lydia, one of the two fair-haired Clavats in the caravan. "They say no one who ventures this far ever returns."

"Some of them do," replied her older brother, David, "it's just that there's a monster living here who steals the memories of those who try to fight it. Remember the Black Knight? Remember Hurdy? They tried to rid the world of miasma, and wound up losing their memories."

A Lilty caravanner, a strong lad named Dimo Nor, looked up at David in despair. "But so will we, won't we?" he asked. "Maybe we better go back."

Both young men looked up at the Yuke caravanner, Khetala, who had led them here. She stood still, apparently thinking hard.

"There has to be a way we can clear the miasma, or at least cut it off at the source so that it stops flowing and in time we can be rid of it for good—we must at least be getting close," remarked the final caravanner, a lavender-haired Selkie girl named Anaїs Nin.

"I have good news and bad news," answered Khetala at last. "The good news is that Anaїs Nin is right. The source of the miasma lies somewhere on the mountain—if we can destroy the rumored Meteor Parasite, in due time the world will be rid of miasma and people may travel freely once again."

David smiled with a remark of "That is indeed good news."

"And the bad news?" asked Lydia with trepidation.

Khetala looked up at the mountain again. "The bad news is that David is also right—there also lies on this mountain a monster that feeds on the memories of all our races of people. Should we venture forth to destroy the creature that sends the miasma over the whole world, we will awaken the dragon Raem."

"Raem," repeated Dimo Nor. "That must've been the beast that stole the Black Knight's memories!" Khetala nodded assent but said nothing, so Dimo Nor asked her, "Then how do we keep it from sucking _our_ memories out of us?"

They could all tell by the way that Khetala hung her head that it surely involved suffering. "The only way it cannot take our memories from us…"—she faltered and took a deep steadying breath—"…is if we are already dead when it reaches us. If we are to destroy the source of the miasma, it will cost all of us our lives."

"So what you're thinking we should do," answered Anaїs Nin, "is that dealing the final blow to the Meteor Parasite will awaken Raem. So as soon as we deal that final blow, we drop the chalice and run away, hoping the miasma kills us before Raem catches anybody?"

"It need not end like this," said Khetala at last. "Our chalice is two-thirds full; we need only one more drop of myrrh before we must return to Tipa. There are four months and some odd days left in the year before our fellow townsfolk expect us to return."

David looked at Khetala, and then at Anaїs Nin. "We can continue as we have for many long years, collecting myrrh to keep Tipa safe from the miasma until we choose to pass the chalice on to new caravanners…" he thought aloud, "or we can all sacrifice ourselves to try and cut off the miasma at its source. So that when Tipa's crystal loses the power to keep the miasma at bay, it won't have as much miasma to repel and the townsfolk will still be safe that way."

Anaїs Nin shook her head in dismay, explaining, "It can't work—the miasma won't kill us quickly enough." She was thinking of the Selkie scholar whom the caravan had met in Shella, De Nam, and his experiment of drinking miasma-tainted water in order to develop immunity to miasma, as he chronicled in his letters to her for years after their meeting. De Nam had bidden the caravan from Tipa come to Conall Curach in his last letter, but when they arrived, all that they could find of him was his favorite bandana.

"Unless Khetala got the idea because we'd all be winded after a big fight—we all know that afflictions always kill those who are already weakened faster than those who are strong," suggested Dimo Nor halfheartedly.

Khetala nodded slowly, turning to her fellow caravanners in a way that indicated now to be decision time. "We may turn back now if we so choose, or we may ascend Mount Vellenge and make our final stand against the Meteor Parasite that sends the miasma over our world. Does anyone wish to back down?"


	2. To Whatever End

**To Whatever End**

The time had come for the caravanners of Tipa to make what would be the hardest, even if not the last, decision of their lives. Would they be the party of adventurers that would destroy the source of the miasma and set the world free of it, even at the cost of their own lives? Or would they turn back from Mount Vellenge and leave the abyss while they still could?

David looked around at his fellow caravanners, seeing in them the same fear of inevitable doom that threatened to take the heart of him. But none of them had come all the way to the end of the world for nothing, did they? This alone gave him the resolve to make his decision. He drew his sword, a powerful weapon that the Lilty blacksmith who forged it had christened "Ragnarok." In the language of the warrior people it meant "the end of all things"—and even if it was his end, it would also be an end to the oppression of the miasma. "We didn't come to the end of the world for nothing, did we?" said he. "We've come to the source of the miasma—let's destroy it and lift its curse."

Lydia looked up at David, her brown eyes meeting his hazel ones for a long moment, and then she too drew a thin but razor-sharp blade. "I guess I can't let my big brother face this menace alone," she added as she gave David a brief weak smile. "The world will be free of miasma, even if none of us here live to see its freedom."

Dimo Nor adjusted the golden gauntlets that covered his hands and forearms before readying his spear—the one that his father had given to him two years ago following the tragedy of the Black Knight. "Too long it's been that this evil has had its way with the world we live in," he said as he raised his determined green eyes to the eye-holes in Khetala's helm. "No more."

Anaїs Nin's silver eyes fell dark with a pang of grief as she unwrapped a pair of magic angel-tear earrings from the torn piece of cloth in which she kept them safe, but only for a moment, replaced by the flame of determination. She raised her legendary racket forged of orichalcum. "Whatever it takes to clear the miasma, I will do it," she told all her fellow caravanners, "for all who would be free."

"The decision is unanimous, then," replied Khetala, picking up the crystal chalice and holding it high. "We march upon the edge of night."

So the caravan from Tipa began the climb up the slopes of Mount Vellenge. Within two hundred yards of where they hitched the reins of the papaopamus that pulled their wagon, however, a large boulder blocked their path. Even as she heard Dimo Nor let slip a swearword that only Lilties ever used, Anaїs Nin rushed forward and battered the boulder with her racket until it crumbled.

"Cowardly monsters," said the young Selkie woman scornfully. "Hiding behind rocks with no fighters for miles around—_yikes_!" she yelped as she jumped aside just in time to avoid the disembodied-arm-swing of a floating spherical monster.

Passing the crystal chalice to David, Khetala crossed two fingers be-ringed with magicite rings and brought the monster down with a Gravity spell. Before the sphere could rise again, Anaїs Nin whacked it several times with her racket, and Dimo Nor leaped forward with a powerful spear-thrust to defeat it. "Plenty more where that thing came from," the Lilty warned.

Dimo Nor turned out to be right—every time Anaїs Nin smashed a boulder with her racket, monsters waited on the other side for the motley caravanners. Most were spheres, tonberries, or death-knights, but occasionally the monster behind the boulder was a shade that wielded a blade, mace, or spear—one boulder even hid a chimera. To fight this variety of monsters, Khetala passed the chalice alternately to David and Lydia whenever she needed to bring down a sphere or force a shade to materialize so that Dimo Nor, Anaїs Nin, and whichever Clavat was not holding the chalice could attack the monster in melee. Although some monsters dropped magicite or food when slain, most simply dissolved into the miasma from whence they came.

"Now which way?" asked Lydia once the caravanners reached a crossroads of sorts where boulders blocked both paths ahead.

Khetala raised her head to the heavens as if praying for guidance. "We go right," she answered after a long pause. Dimo Nor looked at her uncertainly, as did Lydia, but Anaїs Nin proceeded to smash the boulder that blocked the left path. Another spear-wielding shade awaited the caravanners on the other side, which they defeated. It left behind a plume of phoenix down when it dissolved into the miasma. "Leave it," Khetala commanded, holding Lydia back as she approached to retrieve it. "Remember that our plan depends on the monster Raem not finding us alive once we defeat the Meteor Parasite."

Soon, however, they came upon a crystal-like object that glowed with an ominous-looking purple light. Standing in front of it was a tonberry, which David dispatched fairly easily—but almost as soon as the tonberry dissolved into the miasma, the light of the crystal chalice stopped glowing.

Dimo Nor was the first to collapse to his knees as miasma poisoning began to set in. "Destroy—that—purple thing!" he choked out. But he needn't have bothered saying anything; as was her role, Anaїs Nin leapt forward and smashed the crystal with her racket, letting out an exhausted breath once the chalice's crystal glowed again. She alone remembered to hold her breath when the chalice's crystal had stopped glowing in order to minimize the effects of miasma poisoning.

"Okay, now we know we have to be quick about destroying those things," she panted. Thankfully, the caravanners only encountered two more dark crystals—one more before they reached what appeared to be a moogle nest underneath a stone bridge, and one afterward. The latter unfortunately had a large plant-like tentacle guarding it against intruders, a monster that tried to freeze the caravanners with ice when they attacked it. The tentacle had succeeded in freezing Lydia once and knocking Khetala to the ground with a powerful lashing strike before Dimo Nor and Anaїs Nin walloped it.

They had come at last to the point of no return. "This is it," Khetala told them, "when we go forward, there will be no turning back."

"Then we march forward and destroy this menace," answered David, "for the people of Tida who lost their lives to the miasma."

"For Hurdy of Tipa," agreed Lydia, "may we succeed where he failed."

"For the Black Knight," subjoined Dimo Nor, "whose soul was so ravaged that only in death did he find peace."

"For De Nam of Leuda," added Anaїs Nin as she now picked up the chalice, "who tried to be free but at last buried his ambition in the marsh of dead dreams."

Khetala adjusted the magicite rings on her fingers. "To give hope to those who live on," said she, "we make our final stand."

Even from their distance the caravanners could see the miasma emanating from the great Meteor Parasite—a huge round creature sunk into the ridges of the mountain, covered in millions of filmy-looking tendrils. More tentacles like the one that had gurarded a dark crystal sprouted up on either side of the parasite, and a long slender appendage emerged from its core.

Before the red-tipped tentacle could try to burn or lash anyone, Khetala froze it with a Blizzard spell and Dimo Nor hacked it to pieces. The black-tipped tentacle, however, proved harder to defeat, as Khetala tried many spells against it, to little avail until she cast a Holy spell that weakened it significantly and hammered it repeatedly. David, Lydia, and Dimo Nor each tried their best to chop at the Meteor Parasite's long central whip-like appendage with their weapons, while Anaїs Nin rushed around trying to keep everyone within the protective aura of the crystal chalice. Occasionally, however, Anaїs Nin would need to drop the chalice in order to cast Cure spells on her fellow caravanners—or even run to rescue a party member that had been flung outside the chalice's aura by a hard blow.

Suddenly, however, the parasite stopped lashing at the caravanners with its whipping tendril. Instead, that tendril appeared on the back—along with blue- and purple-tipped tentacles that respectively tried to freeze and paralyze the caravanners. Now the Meteor Parasite started to knock the caravanners around with spells that made the ground explode beneath them, and all the while it held its tendril out of both Clavats' reach, as their swords were not long enough to reach the tendril. "We'll never hit it, we need to try another way," Lydia called out. Then she had an idea: "I'll take the chalice, Anaїs Nin—see if you can jump high enough to reach that long thing there!"

The plan worked—Anaїs Nin succeeded in whacking at the tendril with her racket several times before a purple-tipped tentacle that sprouted up lashed her hard enough to knock her several yards outside the chalice's aura. Realizing this, Lydia tossed the chalice to her brother. David caught it perfectly, running to Anaїs Nin with the others following in his wake and hauling her upright with one arm.

With just a few more racket-strikes at the tendril, however, the Meteor Parasite changed its form again. This time its tendril emerged from the front, below a large eye-like organ, and the tentacles on either side were again red- and black-tipped. As the tentacles lashed, the parasite shot dangerous blue projectiles like bullets wildly at the caravanners.

David, Lydia, and Dimo Nor could attack the weak point of the tendril more easily now, but everyone had trouble avoiding the large bullets, especially Khetala, who now had a harder time casting spells on the tentacles. The caravanners were getting frantic now—the chalice had never changed hands as often as in this battle as they rushed to protect each other, alternately striking with their weapons, casting spells, or running with the chalice to keep everyone within its protective field. At last Dimo Nor drove his lance one last time deeply into the root of the parasite's tendril and yanked it out. The great Meteor Parasite convulsed violently, thrashing about so much that the Lilty was sure that this was the end of it.

But even as the Meteor Parasite dissolved into the miasma that it spewed all over the world, the caravanners heard a great roar.

"Raem," said Khetala. "RUN!"

Nobody needed telling twice. They had to scatter, hoping that the miasma killed them all before Raem caught anybody, or they would lose their memories to the demon.

David had made it several yards away, as the miasma started to blur his vision and make him feel terribly ill, when a death-knight set upon him. The blond Clavat had barely even raised his sword to defend himself—and the death-knight impaled him upon its jagged blade, leaving David bathed in his own blood, to die at last.

Lydia, bruised and bleeding, limping from a twisted ankle sustained in the final part of the battle, saw what would probably be a safe niche to hide in were it not for the miasma, in a near corner. There she curled up into a fetal position under her shield, trying to focus all her thoughts on the hope of green country and clear blue sky as the miasma took her, her hope for the future that she would not see.

For Khetala, the clouded distance that she ran through seemed endless—when would it end? she wondered. She had her answer less than twenty seconds later as she sank to her knees, too weakened to run anymore, and fell face-forward onto the all-but-untrod path, a magicite stone rolling from her furred hand.

Anaїs Nin's desperate bid to outrun Raem, however, was probably the quickest-ending, for just as she started to feel sick from miasma poisoning a black-tipped tentacle sprouted up a yard in front of where she ran and lashed her on the side of her head. The blow knocked her out cold and flung her to a steep length of slope where she tumbled down the mountain to just a hundred or so yards away from the Tipa caravan's wagon—where at last the miasma nipped the last bit of life out of her.


	3. Lilty Stroke of Brilliance

_A/N: Remember from the previous chapters that Khetala told the caravanners: "If we are to destroy the source of the miasma, it will cost all of us our lives." When it came time to scatter into the miasma before Raem caught anyone, David was fatally wounded by a death-knight; Lydia curled up under her shield and waited for death there; Khetala simply ran until she couldn't run anymore; Anais Nin got knocked out and tumbled down the slope of Mount Vellenge, never to come around. But what of Dimo Nor? Has he discovered something that even wise Khetala overlooked?_

**Lilty Stroke of Brilliance**

Dimo Nor had no idea how he remembered the moogle nest that lay in the crevice underneath the bridge, only that he now seized the myrrh-bearing crystal chalice and ran toward it as fast as his feet could carry him, hoping that the demon Raem was not on his heels this very moment. Once inside the safety of the moogle nest, however, the usually iron-willed Lilty broke down and wept. No one who knew his tale would have blamed him, for he was now the only caravanner from Tipa to have come to what many thought to be the end of the world and lived. He wept now for the friends he had lost: David and Lydia, two Clavats whose quiet perseverance served to inspire fortitude in all the caravanners during hard times; Khetala, the seasoned Yuke woman who seemed always to know which path the caravan needed to tread; Anaїs Nin, the Selkie adored for her high spirits and her quick wit.

Eventually the Lilty lad cried himself into a fitful slumber, from which the resident moogle of the nest in which he hid did not wake him. It was more than a full day before Dimo Nor woke, so disoriented that he had no idea why he was in a moogle nest to begin with.

"You were running, kupo—you came in here to hide from the big dragon living on the top of the mountain," the moogle, named Ivy, explained to him at last. "But the dragon's gone now—I think it's gone to find some other prey."

The explanation refreshed Dimo Nor's memory: the dragon was Raem, who fed on the memories of anyone who came to Mount Vellenge to try and cut the miasma off at its source. When he and his caravan dealt the blow that destroyed the Meteor Parasite responsible for covering the world in miasma, they had awakened Raem—meaning that they had to scatter before Raem could catch any of them. For all but one of them—and it happened to be Dimo Nor himself—this meant running away from the crystal chalice's protective field in the hopes of dying from miasma poisoning before being caught. But now, even if Raem was no longer looming over Mount Vellenge hoping to find him, plenty of monsters were still on the prowl—Dimo Nor would never make it back to the Tipa caravan's wagon alive.

"I'll never make it back to the wagon alive…" he murmured.

"Yes, you can, kupo! I can carry your chalice for you, kupo, so you can fight if you need to!" offered Ivy, picking up the chalice.

Dimo Nor pulled himself to his feet unsteadily, wishing that he had some kind of food to eat, before crawling out of the moogle nest with Ivy in his wake. There were no monsters in sight when he emerged, so he searched the skies, prepared to hide if he saw any sign of Raem.

"Hey, kupo! Look over there—is that someone else from your caravan?" called out Ivy, appearing to indicate a body on the ground about thirty yards from the moogle nest. Dimo Nor followed Ivy's indication to see that the body was that of a Yuke—it was Khetala. She lay on her front, limbs spread out at odd angles, her hammer a foot away and partially buried in mud.

"Khetala…" breathed Dimo Nor as he spotted what appeared to be a magicite stone that had slipped out of one of Khetala's many pockets. He knelt beside her and picked it up—a life-giving stone that would revive the fallen. Vaguely he remembered the words of some member of the Shella caravan: _"Do not despair when a caravanner falls if you possess a stone of Life, for so long as there is a body to which the spirit may return there may be revival."_

As far as he could remember, though, Dimo Nor had never cast a spell in his life—magic had never been something at which the Lilty people excelled. But as if she heard this thought in the sigh that escaped Dimo Nor's lungs, Ivy offered words of encouragement: "It's worth a try, kupo!"

Indeed it was worth a try, even for one magically inept. Finally Dimo Nor stood up, clasping the magicite stone close to his heart with one hand and raising the other hand to the heavens, crying out, _"Revive, revive the fallen! Khetala, revive!"_

Even as a wave like a thunder shock swept through Dimo Nor's small body and made him collapse to his knees, a wide beam of bright light shone down upon Khetala's fallen frame. Slowly, feebly, the Yuke stirred.

"What happened?" she moaned, trying to sit up as the light diminished.

Dimo Nor knelt down beside Khetala again, supporting her with one arm. "We're still on Mount Vellenge," he explained to her, "but I hear that Raem's moved off since everybody scattered."

Ivy dropped the crystal chalice beside the two caravanners and told Khetala all that she knew of what happened, from seeing them scatter to Dimo Nor taking refuge in her nest and crying himself into a deep sleep. "And I watched over him, I did, kupo—I only left once, and I saw the dragon fly away…and then he didn't think he could, kupo, but he revived you!" she exclaimed eagerly. "And now you two can go bring back the others!"

"So Raem is gone in search of other prey," assessed Khetala when she was able to stand again. "Then we should go and see if the bodies of the others are still salvageable for revival."

"I hope so, too, kupo," answered Ivy in agreement, picking up the chalice to carry it for her and Dimo Nor.

Khetala and Dimo Nor found David next. "I saw a monster cut him up—I'm sure if you can revive him, he'll still have scars," said Ivy. Indeed, David had a gash that ran a curve from one shoulder to his breastbone through his ragged clothing. But even as Ivy dropped the chalice, shuddering, Khetala took the life-giving magicite stone from Dimo Nor and cried out the spell to revive David.

"I never thought I'd be scarred this badly in my life," complained David at last when he finished assessing the damage that spells had failed to fix. "But I swear, if those monsters cut up my sister half this bad, I'll kill them all with my bare hands."

"That's the spirit, kupo!" cheered Ivy.

The caravan from Tipa searched up and down the slopes of Mount Vellenge for nearly two whole days, with barely any food to eat or water to drink, until at last they came upon Lydia. Of all of them she alone appeared to have died in something resembling peace: she lay near a large boulder, curled up into the fetal position and cowered under her shield. She must have tried to think of something pleasant awaiting her in afterlife as the miasma took her.

David hung his head in grief at the sight of his little sister as he thought of how much pain she had been in when she died, but Khetala wasted no time in shouting out the spell to revive Lydia. "How is it that we're all still here?" the Clavat wondered aloud.

Ivy explained again as she had done for everyone so far as Khetala lifted Lydia to her feet: "I saw everyone scatter, kupo! You were all running in every direction—I saw the Lilty boy grab the chalice and run to hide in my nest. He cried himself to sleep there and slept for a long time, and since the big dragon didn't catch anybody, it flew away, through the miasma stream. When the Lilty boy woke up…"

"Dimo Nor found me first when he tried to make it back to the wagon with Ivy, the moogle, carrying the chalice for him," Khetala continued. "He saw that I had dropped a stone of Life and used it to revive me. We found David and brought him back, too, but he was attacked by monsters as he ran, so he has a scar now—and now we have brought you back as well."

"And Anaїs Nin?" asked Lydia, noticing her Selkie friend's absence.

Dimo Nor hung his head, as did Khetala. "We searched three days and nights after reviving your brother before we found you, and we didn't see Anaїs Nin—not a trace of her," answered the saddened Lilty. "I think the monsters must've torn her in pieces by now."

David looked at Ivy. "When you saw all of us scatter into the miasma," he began to question, "did you happen to see what became of a lavender-haired Selkie girl who wore a fine suit of mythril armor and a worn pair of strapped sandals?"

"Something lashed her on the head, kupo, and she rolled down the steep mountainside, but I never saw what happened to her after that," Ivy replied, "no blood or anything like that where I thought she ended up, so I have no idea what happened to her while I watched over the Lilty boy."

"We should go back to the wagon, since we haven't a chance of finding Anaїs Nin anymore," Khetala sighed heavily. Even so, she laid one hand on her heart for a moment, allowing the pain of the loss to show. At last all four remaining caravanners made their way down Mount Vellenge to climb aboard their wagon—but as she inspected the wagon, Khetala noticed that something was amiss. "This is odd…" she mumbled.

This mumble had caught Dimo Nor's attention. "What is it?" he asked.

Khetala sounded hopeful, but not sure whether to trust in hope, as she explained, "I thought for a moment that bandits came to loot the wagon, but strangely, only some of Anaїs Nin's belongings are missing."

"That doesn't make any sense," said Dimo Nor, "unless…"

"Unless another caravan found her while you were hiding in the moogle nest," Khetala finished for him. "But how they crossed the miasma stream, and why they took her away once they revived her, without searching for any others, I don't know."

David blinked as he digested all of Khetala's speculation. "And if she really was found…then why did she leave the wagon, if she thought none of us would return to it?"

"I don't know," answered Khetala. "Anaїs Nin was not the one to grab the chalice and hide, so she should have given up hope of our return—but by the behavior of the papaopamus I would judge that she fed it before departing with whoever found her, it doesn't seem as hungry as it should be. And all the same, which other caravan would've…but we should leave this place. Remember that we need one more drop of myrrh yet."


	4. Miasma Standing Still!

**Miasma Standing Still!**

"Hana Kohl, look there! Look to the west! The miasma stream is standing still!" cried out Dah Yis, one of the two Selkies that gathered myrrh for the port town of Leuda, to his companion as they approached the miasma stream that none had been able to pass for eons.

"Come, come, Dah Yis, you know that we cannot cross it," scolded Hana Kohl in her most exasperated voice. "Let us simply return to Leuda now that our chalice is full. And in any case, we haven't much time."

"It won't hurt to try and cross a miasma stream that stands still, now, will it?" Dah Yis persisted. At last Hana Kohl agreed reluctantly and steered the Leuda caravan's wagon toward the mysterious miasma stream, which (to both Selkies' surprise) allowed them to pass unharmed.

Nothing, however, could have prepared Leuda's caravanners for their next surprise: an apparently-abandoned wagon tied to a hitching post at the base of Mount Vellenge, the yoked papaopamus pawing the ground nervously. "The caravanners, whoever they are, must have been on the mountain a long time, judging by the way the papaopamus is behaving," assessed Hana Kohl, feeding the creature several star carrots and then doing the same for her own caravan's papaopamus. "Shall we continue in search?"

"That may not be necessary—I think I already see someone!" Dah Yis called out, pointing to a body lying almost a hundred yards from the wagons. "Bring the chalice!"

Both of Leuda's caravanners, Hana Kohl carrying the crystal chalice and Dah Yis brandishing a cudgel-like weapon, hastened toward the slain caravanner. It was a fellow Selkie: a young woman of about twenty-four with shoulder-length lavender hair that covered part of her delicate face. Her skin was sun-tanned, dulled slightly by dust, but it might have only appeared so because she wore a fine Selkic garb made of diamonds and a belt inlaid with colorful stones. What puzzled Dah Yis and Hana Kohl, however, was that the fallen caravanner bore no mark of battle: as far as they could see, she had no wounds save where the straps of her over-worn sandals chafed her feet.

"She had to have died of miasma poisoning," said Dah Yis at last, awed and chagrined. "But how could she have simply been left to die—here, of all forsaken places?"

Hana Kohl shook her head in dismay and then, on inspiration, knelt down beside the fallen caravanner and smoothed back the stray hair that partially veiled her face. "Anaїs Nin…" she gasped in shocked surprise.

"Anaїs Nin?" Dah Yis repeated.

"She was the Selkie in the motley crowd from Tipa," his companion explained. "I remember, because we met that group in what was left of Tida, and she led her fellow caravanners in a dirge of remembrance for all the people of Tida who lost their lives as the miasma swallowed the town."

"That and she shares her name with the girl whose death at the hands of a maddened townsman gave rise to the legend that to kill a Selkie is to invite disaster upon one's town, as Clavats and Yukes alike seem to think," added Dah Yis.

But Hana Kohl started in horror as she stood. "LOOK OUT!" she shrieked.

Dah Yis turned around in shock. A tentacle had sprouted up behind him, and it was just about to lash him when he struck at it. Hana Kohl, too, brandished a racket, and with a few economical strikes the tentacle was no more. It crumbled to dust, leaving behind a magicite stone.

"It's a stone of Life…" breathed Hana Kohl in surprise.

"You know what to do in that case," remarked Dah Yis. "Reawaken the fallen Tipa caravanner, and let's take her to Leuda—maybe she can tell us what's happened to make the miasma stand still."

Hana Kohl did as instructed, then again knelt down beside the stirring Anaїs Nin. "Is the danger past?" asked Anaїs Nin feebly.

"What danger are you talking about, Anaїs Nin?" questioned Dah Yis, confused.

Anaїs Nin pulled herself into a sitting position with great effort, beginning to explain. "Khetala said that if we cut the miasma off at its source, we would awaken Raem, the memory-eating dragon that roams Mount Vellenge, so we all had to scatter and be dead before Raem caught us—but how? How do you know my name, and how did you cross the miasma stream?"

"Well," answered Dah Yis, "we both remembered you from Tida—you led the singing of a funeral dirge, and we hear that your Tida namesake is the unfortunate who tried to plant a myrrh tree's root but was killed by a maddened townsman as she did so."

"And the miasma stream that no-one was able to cross for eons is finally standing still, so we were able to cross, spotted your caravan's wagon at the foot of the mountain, and then found you and revived you," added Hana Kohl. "I suppose your caravan is responsible for the miasma stream standing still now?

Anaїs Nin nodded heavily. "Khetala said that our cutting the miasma off at its source depended on Raem not finding any of us alive…"

"So you had to hope that the miasma would kill you before this Raem creature found you or any of your fellow caravanners," Dah Yis finished for her. "Surely you must tell us all about it now that you're alive again, but not now—it can wait for the road."

"The road?" repeated Anaїs Nin.

"We came to investigate the disturbance when we saw that the miasma stream stood still, but our chalice is full, so we want to take you to Leuda with us," explained Hana Kohl. "We haven't any time to go looking for your friends—you can feed your papaopamus again but leave the wagon if you have any hope of your friends returning to it. Otherwise, you'll just have to take your belongings from your wagon and join us on our return to Leuda."

At length (though only after much begging and cajoling until she finally gave up) Anaїs Nin agreed and followed Dah Yis and Hana Kohl back to the hitching post at the base of Mount Vellenge. She only had a few belongings still on the Tipa caravan's wagon that she really wanted to bring along: another change of clothes, a bolt of blue silk, and a few scattered accessories that had served her well as her caravan went far and wide. She also took two cobs of round corn to feed the papaopamus and a striped apple each for herself and the Leuda caravanners before all three Selkies left.


	5. The Hour Before Dawn

**The Hour Before Dawn**

"We dealt the final blow to the Meteor Parasite, and that's when we knew that Raem would wake. We ran away from our chalice—but the last thing I remember is that just as I started to feel the effects of the miasma, something hard struck me on the head," Anaїs Nin told Dah Yis and Hana Kohl after giving them an account of the Tipa caravan's great battle with the Meteor Parasite. "I guess I got knocked out and tumbled down the slope of the mountain…"

"Never to regain consciousness," murmured Hana Kohl, "until someone wielded a life-giving magicite stone to bring you back. You were fortunate to have no new scars."

Anaїs Nin said nothing; merely nodded slightly in assent as she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her head in her arms. Dah Yis sat down beside her in one corner of the ferry deck. "We'll be on Leuda's shore by high noon tomorrow," he promised, "and many of the townsfolk will be glad to see you as well, for it's a rare thing indeed when we bring a newcomer to our celebration."

Yet these words were of no comfort to the brooding Anaїs Nin, who thought of the friends she had left behind. She thought of Tipa, too—how long would its crystal hold if none of her friends returned with the myrrh, even with the miasma now standing still? What if, even now, her family believed her to be dead? She had to send them a letter to tell them and all the other townsfolk to flee Tipa while they could, or she would never hear from them again. And even if Dah Yis and Hana Kohl understood this much about why she felt out of sorts now, there was something else, something Anaїs Nin had never told anyone, that burdened her aching heart. She dared not tell the caravanners from Leuda; she had said nothing of it to her family, and probably the only other in the motley Tipa caravan who understood Anaїs Nin's cause for grief was Khetala.

She had no idea why, after her caravan's visit to Conall Curach, she kept the bolt of blue silk among her belongings now. She certainly had no use for it after finding that a stone sahagin that she killed there, or perhaps the many that jumped out of puddles where a behemoth roamed, had dashed all her hopes into oblivion…

"So full of sadness, and yet quieter even than a Clavat," said Dah Yis when he saw Anaїs Nin staring blankly at the water, her silver eyes clouded with sorrow. "Why?"

"I haven't the heart to tell you," she whispered.

Nor had Anaїs Nin the heart to speak of what Mio, Queen of Memories, had spoken to her before her soul had returned to Mount Vellenge and back into her body with the Life spell that revived her. _"The hour before dawn is always the coldest, Anaїs Nin—but if your heart is true, it will guide you to that which above all else now desires your finding it, and when it is found, you will never be parted again."_ Oh, indeed she felt cold, bereft of her friends and her home, never to see them again. She dared not confide the many causes of her distress to these strangers that bore her to a town where she had no friends.

But _the hour before dawn_? If the "dawn" meant the thinning-out of the miasma, it would still take several long years, maybe many long decades. Would she thusly live all the rest of her life in grief? And if it meant meeting her lost fellow caravanners again, it would never happen; Khetala's plan depended on her and everyone else dying in the first place. Her being found by Leuda's caravan and brought back was merely a twist of fate.

And _that which above all else now desired her finding it_? Anaїs Nin had no idea _what_ it was that could possibly want to be found by her alone, much less where to look. For all she knew, what the Queen of Memories would have her search for might be all the way in Alfitaria, or possibly in Shella, so far from the shores of Leuda to which the ferry now bore her.

* * *

Meanwhile, by the time that the ferry was but a day from Leuda's shore, the caravan from Tipa set a course eastward across the plains of Rebena.

"So our attack on the source of the miasma was successful," summed up David as the caravanners waded through the marshy road between the labyrinth of Rebena Te Ra and the moldering ruins of Conall Curach. "The great streams of miasma are all standing still now—and if I'm not mistaken, the crystal auras around towns should widen, slowly but surely. But it'll take a very long time, and we'll probably all be dead anyway by the time people can travel freely again. _'The hour before dawn is always the coldest,'_ or so I heard a voice that said."

Khetala stepped up. "I ought to tell you all something, something that I do not know who else remembers," she began to explain. "There is a prophecy in which I have always believed, ever since the crystal spoke it to me one night before the caravan departed, seventeen years ago. It says, _'An age of darkness and shadows engulfs this world in which we live, never to end until four and others find the true heart to forget their eternal conflicts and march upon the edge of darkness as one, for only with this unity will there be revival.'_ Those four, even without their conscious will, would stir others to unite also." Khetala, they all knew, was possessed of a gift that was rare even among the Yukes: by placing her hand on a town's crystal, she could hear it speak and glean information from forgotten memories that had become drops of myrrh to purify the crystals when gathered. She claimed to have learned many forgotten prophecies this way, which influenced her decisions of whom she wanted to join her aboard the caravan.

"Four and others…forget their eternal conflicts…" David repeated. "Maybe you're right, Khetala, maybe it did mean us all along, even though my sister Lydia and I are two Clavats instead of one, if the 'four' meant one person of every tribe. I mean, Tipa is the only town that sends a caravan of mixed-up…well, everyone. At least one of us had to know something nobody else did…"

"You're quite right on that score, David," answered Khetala serenely. "Of all the cities and villages in this world, Tipa is the town that has the greatest respect for the differences of race. I knew that the caravan from Tipa would be the one to fulfill the prophecy of the revival. It was for that reason that I joined the caravan—I swore that I would not leave the caravan until I had had the Yukes' hand in the revival of which the prophecy spoke."

"And to do that you needed to lead a motley caravan to Mount Vellenge," assessed Lydia. "You said that destroying the source of the miasma would cost all of us our lives—but thanks to Dimo Nor, it didn't end that way…"

She broke off, looking somehow confused and distressed—and then, without any warning save that wild look of confusion, Lydia fell to her knees and broke down crying. "Lydia!" David blurted out his sister's name in alarm at her sudden fit of distress. "Lydia, what's wrong?" But Lydia could not answer for sobbing, and the only clues anyone had to the direction of the distressing thoughts that provoked the fit of crying were the moments when the young Clavat woman would raise her tear-flooded brown eyes to the road that led to Conall Curach. "You're thinking of Anaїs Nin," said David at last, kneeling down beside Lydia and putting an arm around her shoulders. "I understand—you loved her like a sister. You and me both."

"And she may yet be alive," added Dimo Nor. "Remember what Khetala said? The miasma streams have no elements now that we cut it off at the source—some other curious caravanners could've crossed the stream leading there, found her, and taken her with them once they revived her. If that's what happened, my guess would be that it was Leuda's caravan…"

Lydia only sobbed harder. Here her caravan was after the assault on the Meteor Parasite—she and all her fellow caravanners were even back from a death that was necessary to save their souls from the memory-eater Raem…all except for the Selkie they all held dear. Was it only in death that her poor friend was able to find peace? Or if Khetala was right and Anaїs Nin had been found…would she have wanted to be brought back alone and bereft of all those she ever loved?

"_The hour before dawn is always the coldest,_ Lydia," assured Khetala, "but the dawn will rise, no matter what else it brings, the dawn will rise."

_A/N: So pass the bleakest days for the Tipa caravan, especially Anais Nin, who has become separated from her dear friends and (as far as she can tell) will never see them, or her home, again. But it may turn out that not all is lost--maybe even that a hope once buried is now unearthed. Only time will tell what lies ahead._


	6. Joyous Reunion

_Five chapters and no reviews--what is this? Come on, readers!_

_(Sorry about the editing inconsistencies that cropped up in-between some of the chapters when I submitted them.)_

_But enough about that. Back to the story, in which things are only going to get better for the motley Tipa caravan..._

**Joyous Reunion**

Anaїs Nin was surprised, in spite of all her worry and grief, to see that the edge of the protective aura radiating from Leuda's crystal met the ferry sooner than it had when she went to Leuda with her own caravan. For the first time in the entire journey from Mount Vellenge to Leuda, she felt a ray of hope shine into her heart. The miasma streams stood still _and_ the protective auras around towns were enlarging since the defeat of the Meteor Parasite. Perhaps her family and home would be safe after all, even if her fellow caravanners never returned home—or if the miasma was still a threat, the townsfolk of Tipa had more time to seek refuge.

As Dah Yis had promised in his attempt to cheer Anaїs Nin up, the citizens of Leuda had hung welcoming banners all over their town and thronged the port in wait for the ferry that had brought the caravan home. Indeed, the warm welcomes of those who remembered her from the motley Tipa crowd brought the smile back to Anaїs Nin's face, and she enjoyed meeting others that Dah Yis introduced to her. But all the same, nothing could have prepared her for the surprise that met her next.

"Hello there!" called out Hana Kohl to someone in the crowd. Anaїs Nin, following her glance, realized that Hana Kohl spoke to a young man who wore clothes of a color that Anaїs Nin had never seen in Selkic attire: bright fire-orange that contrasted sharply with the short, rough-cut blue hair partially held back by an orange headband. The man was marked with a scar that ran along his jaw line from below one ear to his chin, and several more scars on his chest and shoulders—but his gaze traveled from Hana Kohl to Anaїs Nin, and on seeing her there came a gleam of delight to his silver eyes that she recognized…

"Do my eyes deceive me?" murmured Anaїs Nin in disbelief. It couldn't be. A stone sahagin that she killed in Conall Curach dropped his bandana, as she had recognized it from their first meeting in Shella six years ago. She had believed him to be dead… Thinking that it must be a trick of the light, Anaїs Nin rubbed her eyes, which, she was startled to discover, were brimming with tears. However, when she was able to see clearly again, he still stood there.

"I'm no trick of the light, Anaїs Nin," said the young man, walking toward her and clasping the hand that had wiped away her tears. Indeed her ears, and her hand, did not deceive her: the man's gentle-sounding voice was unmistakably that of De Nam, and the way he held her hand felt exactly as it did when they had parted ways in Shella. "Surely you must remember the day we met."

"My caravan—we came to Conall Curach—I—I thought you were dead, it's all we could find of you…" sobbed Anaїs Nin as she used her other hand to retrieve the torn piece of cloth that was once his bandana from a pocket, but she couldn't say another word. She was overcome with crying, her joy at seeing De Nam alive still hedged with doubt and disbelief.

This scene surprised Hana Kohl. "How long have you known Anaїs Nin of Tipa?" she asked of De Nam through the hardest of Anaїs Nin's crying.

"Six years, at least," he answered. "I had been living in Shella, researching the connection between myrrh and miasma, when the caravan from Tipa stopped there for a period of rest. Both Anaїs Nin and the Yuke woman, Khetala, were interested to hear of my research, though I think Anaїs Nin was the more interested one of the two. She and I continued to exchange letters since. But why did you and Dah Yis separate her from her caravan to bring her here?"

"It all started when we plundered the labyrinth of Rebena Te Ra for our last drop of myrrh," explained Dah Yis. "I saw that the miasma stream to the northwest of the labyrinth, the one that nobody had crossed for eons as far as we knew, stood still. Hana Kohl wanted to return home once we had our chalice filled, but I convinced her that we should try to cross the miasma stream. We did, and it shocked us to see that there was a wagon tethered to a hitching post at the foot of a forbidding mountain."

"Mount Vellenge," corrected Anaїs Nin, having by now regained her composure. "The wagon belonged to my caravan—we had gone there to destroy the source of the miasma."

Briefly placing a reassuring hand on Anaїs Nin's shoulder, Dah Yis continued, "It was this caravanner that we found just a hundred or so yards away from the wagon—she'd caught her death of miasma poisoning, apparently in a desperate attempt to outrun a memory-eating demon named Raem. Hana Kohl realized who the dead Selkie woman was and revived her with a life-giving magicite stone, and we bade Anaїs Nin come home with us."

"She really wanted us to help her look for the four friends of hers who had met the same end that she did," added Hana Kohl, "but we were already a week late in coming home—would've been two weeks late if we didn't make haste. Eventually she resigned and wrote home to tell the Tipa townsfolk to flee—presumably telling her own family to come to Leuda if they could. But it may appear that I need not have worried, with the miasma streams standing still now—the Tipa caravan's attack on the source of the miasma must have been successful; even today it appears to have started thinning out, if the crystal's aura widening even a little is any indication…"

"It can wait until the crystal ceremony—I have some explaining to Anaїs Nin that I need to do," De Nam finally told the caravanners. With these words, he led Anaїs Nin away from the crowded ferry port and to an inn that served wayward caravanners and others, proceeding to take her to the table farthest from the door. Thankfully the inn appeared to be deserted except for three men and a woman who all sat together at a table near the bar. There Anaїs Nin was finally able to ask him: How had it happened that he was here now?

"Your caravan wasn't the only one that I had bidden come to Conall Curach so that I could show the success of my experiment," explained De Nam, "I also sent a letter to Amidatty from the Shella caravan with the same request. It was he who—miraculously—discovered my mangled body floating in the water. It took the magical efforts of the entire caravan to revive me, but they managed, even though I remain badly scarred from the battle that took my life. I don't know exactly how long it was between my last letters and my untimely death at the hands of a pack of those stone sahagins, or how long I had been dead before the Shella caravan found me. But for my oath to return unburdened I could not return to Shella afterward, so I've been at home in Leuda since. Unfortunately, somehow the Life spells caused me to lose the residual miasma in my body, and my resistance with it—the price I paid for having my life back, I guess."

"I'm sorry to hear that," murmured Anaїs Nin apologetically.

"Don't be," said De Nam with a soothing note of encouragement in his voice. "I thought I had met my end at Conall Curach, but losing my resistance to miasma doesn't mean that my work had to be for nothing now that I'm revived. It just means that if I want to be able to live in the miasma again, I need to start over at the beginning. As our elders say, _'With every revival, there is opportunity to start anew.'_"

As he quoted these optimistic words of the elders, De Nam stood up, an action that surprised Anaїs Nin. He took a step towards her side of the table at which they sat, continuing, "And even if I decide that it's not worth the pain that it caused me the first time now that the miasma seems to be thinning out at long last, there are other ways of starting anew. Do you remember my letter, in which I asked you to come to Conall Curach with your caravan?"

Anaїs Nin said nothing, merely nodded slightly. De Nam took another step toward her. "Do you remember the gift that I sent along with the letter?" he asked.

She gasped in surprise. De Nam had sent to her a bolt of blue silk—the very same one she took from her caravan's wagon when the Leuda caravanners bade her return home with them. Anaїs Nin hadn't told any of the others in the Tipa caravan, but blue silk was traditionally a Selkie man's betrothal gift to his beloved. She was certain that De Nam had meant to propose marriage to her when she and her caravan arrived in Conall Curach, but finding only his worn bandana there had destroyed her hopes. "You sent me a bolt of blue silk," she answered at last, feeling renewed pain mingling with her renewed hope. "I don't know why I kept it after my caravan went to Conall Curach…"

"Yet even now I see hope reviving, like myself, and like you, if what my cousin tells me is true," said De Nam, at last dropping to his knees before Anaїs Nin, his look part apprehension but all earnestness. "And you would be right. I've loved you since the day we met in Shella, Anaїs Nin, all those years ago. I've loved you across all the distance that separated us through those long years, and now that you and I are together, I ask that nothing ever part us again. Anaїs Nin, will you marry me?"

The question winged through like beaming sunshine to Anaїs Nin's heart. She, too, had loved De Nam, but she had never realized just how much so until she believed him dead and gone forever. Now her heart swelled with joy and hope at the prospect of the future that they would share. "Of course I will, De Nam, of course I will, because I love you too," she answered, breathless with joy, as she leaned forward and stood up, lifting De Nam to his feet as she did so.

A dull _thunk_ sounded that interrupted them, found moments later to be a moogle that had bumped itself flying into the inn sign. The moogle was too eager to spread the news that it had just heard. "And now a moogle flies to spread word of our engagement," said Anaїs Nin in an amused voice.

"Then let that tiny moogle tell it to the whole wide world," laughed De Nam, drawing Anaїs Nin ever closer to him. "This is a happy moment—the like of which I've never known." He kissed her then, with all the passion of a man separated from his beloved for far too long.


	7. Good News from Leuda

**Good News from Leuda**

Sunrise a fortnight and a few odd days after the descent from Mount Vellenge found the caravan from Tipa camping in a field perhaps a day's journey from the once-windy Selepation Cave, which for almost two years had been quiet since the Tipa caravan's previous visit.

David was the first to rise. Once he had packed his sleeping blankets back aboard the wagon, he cut a loaf of nearly-stale bannock bread into four big pieces for himself and his fellow caravanners and poured milk from a large jug into four earthenware cups before waking any of his fellows. "We're near the fields of Fum; soon we'll have fruit and vegetables to eat too," he reassured a sulky-looking Dimo Nor; he knew that the Lilty did not like stale bread, but it was all that they could spare for breakfast.

The caravanners ate in relative silence, with only a wistful comment from Lydia about how she wanted the wind to rise from the cave again because then they could go there and collect their last drop of myrrh "and be done with it." David gave his sister a dubious look at this remark; he did not want to think about how cold it had been in Selepation Cave. But at last came something that none of them expected: a moogle flying toward them and calling excitedly, "Kupos from Tipa! Kupos! Kupos!"

Khetala stood bolt upright at the sight of the moogle flying to them from the south, as did David. It did not look like a mail-carrying moogle, as it did not have a letter between its tiny teeth, even though Khetala recognized it as a mailmoogle that had brought many letters to the caravanners over the years. "You have no letter, so why do you call out to us?" asked she, puzzled.

"Good news from Leuda, kupo!" answered the moogle exuberantly despite the fact that it was out of breath.

"Leuda?" Lydia repeated.

"Yes, kupo, Leuda," said the moogle, "You might know that the streaming miasma is standing still now, and better yet, the crystal auras around towns are getting bigger, even the ones that need their myrrh soon."

The caravanners seemed to all take some comfort from this news, as it meant that the miasma would thin out in due time as they predicted (perhaps even quicker than they originally thought), but they still were at a loss as to why this moogle was so excited. "But why Leuda, of all towns?" Dimo Nor asked impatiently.

The moogle bounced up and down with excitement over giving more good news: "The caravan from Leuda went through the miasma stream they thought nobody could cross when they found it standing still, kupo, and they found your Selkie friend Anaїs Nin lying dead at the foot of the mountain there and revived her with magic! They took Anaїs Nin to Leuda with them, kupo!"

"These are ravings," answered David in disbelief. "Even the moogle we met on Mount Vellenge when Dimo Nor went around reviving everyone with a Life stone said she didn't see a trace of Anaїs Nin, so we figured the monsters tore her apart. She can't possibly be alive now."

Dimo Nor, however, did not fully disbelieve. "Ivy said there was no blood where she thought Anaїs Nin landed at the end of her tumble-down when she went to check, and that was the only time she left her nest once I hid from Raem in there," he explained. "So it is possible."

"It's true, kupos! Come to Leuda if you don't believe me," replied the moogle.

"I thought so," Khetala summed up. "Did I not tell you? Real bandits, if they had looted the wagon, would have taken whatever they could—and as it was, only some of Anaїs Nin's belongings were missing." She breathed a sigh of relief. "So Anaїs Nin is alive and safe in Leuda."

"And I have more good news, kupos!" interjected the moogle messenger. "You'll never guess who else is alive and safe in Leuda now, thanks to the caravan of Yukes from Shella!"

David repeated the name of the Yukes' island town soundlessly, cudgeling his brains to think to whom the moogle might be referring. Who might someone from the Shella caravan have found and brought back from the dead, that that person would now reside in Leuda?

"I knew it!" Khetala cried out in a more joyous tone than any of her fellow caravanners had ever heard from her.

"Knew what? What did you know, Khetala?" asked Lydia eagerly.

The moogle flew in circles and figure-eights around the caravanners. "No, don't say it, kupo—let me tell the good news!" it said. "You happen to remember a Selkie named De Nam, don't you?"

"We do," answered David in realization.

"So he is alive? You have seen De Nam in Leuda yourself?" Khetala questioned.

The moogle was bobbing up and down with excitement again as it announced: "I sure did, kupo! And the news is all over Leuda by now—De Nam asked Anaїs Nin to marry him! They're engaged now!"

It took some time for the caravanners to register their astonishment at all of this good news combined. "But that's so wonderful!" breathed Lydia at last.

Dimo Nor, however, seemed dismayed when he spoke again. "And why didn't you tell any of the rest of us that Anaїs Nin was in love with De Nam all along?" he asked Khetala. "Then we would've known why she took Conall Curach so hard after the letter that told us all to come there last year!"

Lydia laid a hand on her heart in pain as she remembered the fateful visit to Conall Curach and the battle with a behemoth and a large pack of stone sahagins. Once the battle was over, they had turned to find Anaїs Nin on her knees, clutching a torn piece of faded purple cloth in one hand and singing something in the Selkic tongue. The rest of the caravanners soon realized that the cloth was De Nam's old bandana, for Anaїs Nin's song was a lamentation; they could tell by the doleful tones of her voice. But any time that David, Lydia, or Dimo Nor tried to speak of it afterward, Khetala bade them be silent.

"I alone realized how broken Anaїs Nin's heart was," explained Khetala. "You see, it was not De Nam's last letter that made her hopeful so much as the gift that came along with it: a bolt of blue silk. What Anaїs Nin never told us in light of that letter, and certainly hadn't the heart to tell us after Conall Curach, is that blue silk is traditionally a Selkie man's betrothal gift to his beloved."

"De Nam meant to propose to Anaїs Nin when we got there," summed up David. "Our visit, when we thought he was dead, destroyed all her hopes. That's why she sang that Selkic lament—but why didn't she say something? We could have offered her some comfort if we only knew what troubled her so."

"Selkies are by nature independent folk—Anaїs Nin must've thought the burden of a broken heart was hers alone to bear, so she did everything she could not to let on, even to me or Khetala," said Lydia mournfully. She got up and went to the wagon, retrieving a quill, ink, and parchment. "Even if we don't go to Leuda to meet her again until we've gotten the last of our myrrh and gone home, though, I'm going to write to her," she explained, "she probably thinks _we're_ all dead now; I have to reassure her that we're all well, so the rest of Tipa is safe."

Dimo Nor nodded assent. "I hadn't thought of _that_!" he realized aloud. "Then by all means, we need to write home, too, in case Anaїs Nin wrote to say that we might not be coming home."

"Very well," concluded Khetala. "Before we set out to the fields of Fum to stock up on food, Lydia and Dimo Nor will write. David, you and I will start packing the wagon—if my recollection serves me correctly, the tree at River Belle Path bears myrrh again this year, so we will top off our chalice there before returning home."

"Wait a moment!" Lydia cried out. "How long will it take us to reach Port Tipa once we board the ferry?"

"A day or two, depending on the state of the river," her brother replied.

David could tell that Lydia was already formulating a plan by the way Lydia began counting on her fingers and muttering things like, "Two days from this side of Jegon River to Port Tipa…a day from there to River Belle Path…"

"That works!" Khetala interrupted Lydia's mumbling. "It cannot take us more than two days of fighting the monsters of River Belle Path before we reach the myrrh tree. We can have our chalice full several weeks before we must return to Tipa for the crystal purification ceremony. River Belle is but a day from Tipa. We will have time to accompany Anaїs Nin's family to Leuda to attend her wedding and back again, and then she and De Nam will decide among themselves whether they wish to stay in Leuda or settle down in Tipa."

Already Lydia and Dimo Nor both wrote as if their hands were on fire with excitement to hear of the good fortune that befell the fellow caravanner thought lost from the fray, as well as to tell of their valiant attack on the source of the miasma. At last, almost two hours later, they finished writing. While Dimo Nor sent his letter along with the moogle that had brought them the news from Leuda that Anaїs Nin was alive and safe, Lydia waited until the caravan reached the fields of Fum and sent her letter with the next messenger moogle she met. All the same, though, all of the caravanners felt their hearts lighten considerably at the delightful turn of events.


	8. This Is the Sign, part I

**This Is the Sign, part I: The Return to Tipa**

The caravanners from Tipa returned home at three hours past noon following their harvest of one last drop of myrrh from River Belle Path the previous day, a full eleven weeks before the time that they were due to return.

Here, like at Marr's Pass and the fields of Fum (and Leuda, according to the moogle that brought good news), the aura of the town's crystal was already widening; this year it met the caravan a good sixty yards before the bridge into the town. Even today a group of Clavat children had discovered a new tree to climb and were swinging from its branches.

"Sam! Theo!" David called out to two boys of twelve and eleven who were trying to carve their names into the trunk of the tree—two younger brothers that he and Lydia left at home in their time abroad as caravanners. Both boys jumped up, startled and then delighted, running eagerly into the arms of their older siblings, while one of the other children sprinted across the bridge to tell the whole town that the caravan had returned.

"The safe field's gotten bigger—didn't you know?" Theo asked Lydia.

"We knew, even before we reached the fields of Fum on our way back," Lydia answered. "We all went to Mount Vellenge and destroyed the source of the miasma there. We'll tell everyone about it later, when we address the whole village."

By word-of-mouth from the children who played, word quickly spread throughout the tiny village of Tipa that the caravan had returned early, albeit with one less person among them. The open space around Tipa's crystal filled with villagers who tried to make their exclamations of surprise and anxious inquiries heard.

"You're back—and it's still three months before the myrrh festival!"

"The crystal aura's widening—they say the miasma's thinning out!"

"Where is the Selkie who was with you—did she get killed in a fight? What happened to her?"

"There was a letter saying the town would fall—that we'd all have to get out! But then there was a letter from Dimo Nor to tell us that all was well…"

Khetala raised a large hand to call for silence as the wagon rolled into the open expanse. "Settle down, settle down, my friends and countrymen," she began to say. "It's true, we have much to tell this year, given the circumstances of our return. Hear me well, as I will explain the phenomenon that surrounds the widening aura of the crystal and many other things that you all, as my fellow townsfolk, wish to know."

Then Khetala told the townsfolk about the caravan's journey to the Lynari Desert four years ago and how the mysterious Clavat wanderer Gurdy had, by a series of poetic verses, pointed the caravan to a means of crossing any miasma stream with a single magical element. This was the unknown element, she explained, that held dominion over earth, water, fire, and air alike. Khetala then proceeded to explain that there lay a miasma stream west of the Rebena plains that matched this unknown element. Only by finding it in the desert could the caravanners cross, though they had not attempted to do so until so very recently. Beyond the miasma stream lay the eerily still village of Mag Mell populated only by large green furry-looking sleepy creatures called carbuncles and a few moogles in their nest, and even beyond Mag Mell there lay the mountain that for centuries was only ever spoken of in rumors and whispers: Mount Vellenge.

"Every child of every race today hears stories of an ongoing battle between a queen of memories who turns good memories into myrrh and a great evil demon who uses bad memories to turn the miasma into monsters, as they vie for dominance over the world that we live in," David began to cut in. "It was at Mount Vellenge that we learned just how real those clashing forces were, as real as the crystals and the drops of myrrh that purify them, and as real as the miasma and the monster-forms it assumes. We learned that the very source of the miasma was nested at the summit of Vellenge, and Khetala led us there intending that we destroy it."

"But before we speak further of Mount Vellenge," Khetala started explaining again, "there is something else that I must make known. Three years ago now, we witnessed the death of the Black Knight, a Lilty who had lost much of his memory. In his dying words the Knight gave the demon a name: _'so long as people live, Raem will make them suffer,'_ he said. _Raem._ That is the name of the demon that ravaged the Black Knight's soul. I knew that Raem would thus attempt to ravage our souls, as well, if we went to destroy the great bulbous parasite creature that sent the miasma forth over our world."

"Then how did you survive with your memories intact?" questioned a fearful old Clavat woman—Maladye, the wife of town elder Roland. "Is that what happened to Anaїs Nin—this demon Raem got hold of her and stole her memories?"

Lydia looked significantly at Khetala before answering the old woman's question. "We didn't—all survive, that is. Raem would come after us to take our memories once we successfully destroyed the source of the miasma, so, according to Khetala's plan, we had to drop the crystal chalice and run as far away as we could, hoping that the miasma killed us all before Raem caught anyone. It was either severe memory loss or death by miasma poisoning, there was no other way."

"Damn you for a fool among Yukes, Khetala!" an angry Yukish man burst out. It was MacWeise, Khetala's father. "You would have led the entire caravan to its death for an end you would never even succeed in reaching! You may have cut off the miasma at its source, but it's still a threat, as your Selkie friend was only too right to point out in a tear-stained letter to her family!"

"Wait a moment—then how did it happen that any of you is even still here, let alone carrying a full myrrh chalice?" asked the town elder, Roland, as much out of wonderment as to cut off MacWeise's sudden tirade.

"I'm very glad that you ask," Khetala explained calmly, taking Dimo Nor by the shoulder, an action that surprised many people. "_This_ brilliant Lilty remembered that we passed a moogle nest on our way up the mountain, quite close to the miasma-spewing Meteor Parasite where it lay waiting for us. On hearing the roar that told us of Raem's waking once we finally annihilated the parasite, Dimo Nor seized the chalice and ran to hide in that moogle nest. The resident moogle told us that our Lilty friend lay in her nest, himself fading in and out of consciousness, for over a full day before he was able to set out from there again. He found my body first, as I had simply run until I could go no further, and saw that I had dropped a life-giving magicite stone when I fell. By the good grace of Mio, Queen of Memories, Dimo Nor—who had never yet cast a spell in his life—was able to cast the Life spell that revived me. Over the next two days and nights we searched, finding David and then Lydia."

Dimo Nor stepped forward at last. "At that point, having failed to find Anaїs Nin and learning from our moogle friend that Anaїs Nin had gotten knocked out and thrown down the mountain in her desperate bid to outrun Raem, we despaired of ever finding her. We hadn't an inkling of the real nature of what separated her from the caravan until inspecting our wagon to find her belongings—and only hers—missing, and later observing that what used to be the miasma stream was now standing still. Khetala did suspect that another caravan had been able to cross and took Anaїs Nin with them after reviving her, but…"

"Roland did say that much was true after he got your letter, Dimo Nor," interrupted a middle-aged Selkie woman—Rah Sie, Anaїs Nin's mother. "Both your letter and Anaїs Nin's letter, the tear-stained one that told us of the impending doom, relate such an assault on Mount Vellenge and say that _she_ was then separated from the caravan and taken to Leuda."

"We didn't know for sure what happened to Anaїs Nin until more than two weeks after we left Vellenge and were on our way back to the fields of Fum," Dimo Nor continued, "when a moogle flying from the south cried out to us 'Good news from Leuda!' It told us that it was Leuda's caravan that crossed the miasma stream and found Anaїs Nin; that they'd taken her to that shore. And saying of which, has she written anything home since the letter saying she feared the worst?"

"No," answered Anaїs Nin's father, the merchant Zeh Gatt, "no, she hasn't."

"She was still aboard the ferry at the time she sent the letter," added a Selkie girl who was about seven years younger than Anaїs Nin—her sister, Tala Ne. "She told us to come to Leuda if we could in the event that the rest of you didn't return—this isn't anything to smile about, Lydia, what the hell are you looking like that for?" she suddenly accused.

The joyful Clavat caravanner only smiled wider. "On the contrary," she began, "it's better this way. Anaїs Nin left us to bear the good news."

"Either that, or she thought the excited moogle would spread the word for her," Dimo Nor chimed in.

"What good news?" asked another voice in the crowd, probably that of a Lilty.

"I went to Leuda long ago with the caravan before the year that Dimo Nor and Anaїs Nin first became caravanners," Khetala explained. "There I learned of a prophecy that foretold how a Selkie daughter named Anaїs Nin would stand with those chosen to '_march upon the edge of night, and even unto death, from whence she will return to bear the light of golden dawn._' She, Anaїs Nin of Tipa, did just that—she helped us destroy the source of the miasma, and then cast her body into the miasma to save her soul from a demon that would devour it. But her being found, revived with magic, and taken to Leuda—I should have known—what would come of her reaching Leuda was the sign of the Great Revival: the dawn of a new Golden Age."

Zeh Gatt sighed impatiently. "You're not making sense, Khetala," said he, "how would Anaїs Nin being taken to Leuda be a sign of a great revival?"

"I thought it made no sense too," Lydia answered for Khetala, "until our erstwhile moogle messenger told us it had more good news. It said, _'You'll never guess who else is alive and safe in Leuda, thanks to the caravan of Yukes from Shella!'_"

"You all might remember our return last year," added David with the indication that he was now addressing the several Selkies that formed Anaїs Nin's family (as hers was the only family of that race in Tipa), "that when we returned, Anaїs Nin was hopelessly out of sorts, and remained so almost until we were ready to depart again."

Tala Ne nodded, recalling aloud, "We know she did cry a lot—who knew it was because she'd fallen in love with the ambitious young man she'd met in Shella (I don't remember, was his name De Nam?) and discovered he'd been killed by monsters in Conall Curach?"

"As it turned out," explained Khetala, voice rising with excitement, "the 'sign of the great revival' was _a marriage of two souls returned from death!_ De Nam was the one that the Shella caravan found and brought back to the world of the living—that he, too, was now alive and safe in Leuda—and he asked Anaїs Nin to marry him, almost the moment they were reunited!"

"_What?"_ came Rah Sie's astonished cry, echoed in broken exclamations of surprise from several other villagers.

"You heard right," said Dimo Nor boastfully, thumping the ground with the butt end of his spear in emphasis. "Anaїs Nin's going to get married—and we all plan to be there when it happens, so tonight we'll celebrate our myrrh festival, and tomorrow we set out for Port Tipa, on the ferry bound for Leuda!"

Another Selkie from Anaїs Nin's family, her cousin Foo Kloo, shook her head at Dimo Nor. "But if that's why you came home so soon before the actual day of the myrrh festival, then you don't need to be so hasty," said she in an effort to calm the keyed-up caravanners and the excited townspeople. "Stay and rest at least a few days—and even more importantly, give _us_ some time to prepare to welcome the newlyweds back to Tipa if Anaїs Nin and De Nam would wish to settle down here."

"I know what any of you would say," added Zeh Gatt in a stance of dignified resignation, "that if what you tell us happened to Anaїs Nin is true, then it's all as the good Queen of Memories wishes, and I would not try to prevent Anaїs Nin from being married to De Nam of Leuda. All the same, however, Foo Kloo is right. Give us time to prepare to welcome the newlyweds should they be inclined to return to Tipa."

All the while, the crowd of townsfolk dispersed, in haste to prepare for the myrrh festival and excited with the prospect of welcoming a new face to Tipa in the near future. For Tipa, what Khetala said was true: this was the sign of the Great Revival.

_A/N: Just so you know, I only allow characters to repeat facts as events occur in order to enlighten characters like the townsfolk who don't know what's going on, in case anybody's bothered by repetition. But before I cut to more fluff, keep your eyes peeled for a battle coming up as Raem finds out the five Tipa caravanners have thwarted him!_


	9. Raem's Waking

**Raem's Waking**

Somehow the violent convulsion of the Meteor Parasite's final dissolve was enough to jolt the great demon Raem out of his spell of slumber—but it was too late, as he discovered upon coming to Mount Vellenge. The source of the miasma had been destroyed, meaning that the reign of monsters and the pain that they could inflict was counting its last days.

Furious, Raem flew over the mountain with evil shades following in his wake, so that hopefully he would catch the meddling fools responsible and make them pay for their treachery. But to the demon's greater anger, only four bodies could be found—all under a mysterious ring-of-protection spell that none of the minions could penetrate to do further harm to the bodies. One belonged to a blond Clavat who had obviously been fighting much of his life but was at last fatally wounded at the hands of a death-knight. Another Clavatian body lay curled up in a fetal position under a shield. A third corpse was that of a Yukish woman who had to have known that Raem would be coming for her and plunged into the miasma until her feet could take her no further. And it wasn't until the scouting shades reached the foot of Mount Vellenge that they found the last body of one who had died on the mountain: a Selkie maiden whom one of the tentacles must have thrown down a steep slope.

"_There was supposed to be a Lilty among them—where the hell is he?_" Raem thought angrily. But there was no trace of a Lilty, nor even a crystal chalice that this caravan was carrying and from which they had fled to outrun Raem. Was the Lilty hiding in a moogle nest? Raem was about to order another search—until he realized that if there was a moogle nest in which a Lilty, or anyone else, could hide, it was probably under a similar protective spell to save the mortal survivor from the minions.

"_This is Mio's doing,"_ Raem fumed, _"for only she protects the mortals whom she favors in this manner—where have I seen this protective spell used before?"_ At last his gaze fell on Anaїs Nin, the Selkie who had been thrown down the mountain, and Raem knew the answer to his own question. _"The one I underestimated—she should have died at the dragon zombie's claws several months ago. I might have known! Well, she won't defy me a third time!"_ So Raem concentrated a surge of evil energy into a curse upon Anaїs Nin:

"_Rumble and erupt as Mount Kilanda may—_

_And I know full well it will, if Lady Mio has her way—_

_No life, no life at all, will e'er take root upon that isle:_

_Future bleak it follows ahead, all th' eternal while._

It was probably one of few curses against which Lady Mio would not have had the forethought to shield Anaїs Nin. Right now, the Queen of Memories was more interested in intertwining the fates of those living (or waiting for revival by those able to wield Life magicite) now than in shaping the future that those not yet born would wield.

Gathering his forces one last time in a rallying roar, Raem set a course across the continent to the proud Lilty city of Alfitaria. Furious at being unable to find the Lilty among the motley either dead or alive, the demon at least assuaged his anger with the knowledge that the people of that tribe would be the first to pay for the brash challenge to his dominion.


	10. The Battle of Alfitaria

**The Battle of Alfitaria**

Powerful wings and the greater power of his fury at the Tipa caravanners (especially the Lilty who had been among them) carried Raem from Mount Vellenge to Alfitaria in less than a day, a journey that would have taken a crystal caravan ten times the duration if they were in a hurry.

The boundary stones, houses, and other buildings that stood on the western edge of the proud city, and the citizens that dwelt within, were the first things to fall at Raem's arsenal of destruction. The demon had bubbles of evil energy that could freeze, paralyze, or burn whomever they hit at his disposal, and a blue laser that made the ground explode wherever its point fell. Monsters from the surrounding myrrh shrines answered Raem's rallying roars as quickly as they could: abaddons, skeletons, and carrion-worms from the desecrated village of Tida to the east. The great gigas-lord Jack Moschet and his lamia wife Maggie led their coeurls, gargoyles, and tonberry chefs into the plunder from Moschet Manor to the southwest, and even gigan toads, griffins, and lizardmen crossed the miasma stream from Veo Lu to the west to answer Raem's call.

The Lilties that formed the army of Alfitaria took up spears and lances to fight off the great army of monsters and called on any and all other residents who could wield weapons of war to do the same. Meanwhile, the sudden Alfitaria-ward flight of an abaddon they had pursued roused the attentions of the caravan of Lilties from Marr's Pass. Nothing, however, could have prepared them to see Alfitaria, the proud city that had been the capital of the Liltian empire in the days of old, under attack by such a great monster-horde as Raem now bore down on the city.

"What're you waiting for?" the leader Rolf Wood demanded of his fellow caravanners. "Alfitaria needs our help!" None of them needed any further prompting to charge into battle.

The caravan of Yukes from Shella, too, were nearby enough to sense that the monsters that now overlooked four Yukes in favor of their northeast-ward pursuit probably equated to trouble even worse than a direct assault. The leader of that caravan, Amidatty, knew that his fears were confirmed when a moogle painted in stripes flew toward them in a panic, narrowly avoiding being chomped up by a flying gargoyle.

"The city's being attacked!" the moogle cried out. "Alfitaria is getting overrun with monsters! The people need all the help they can get, kupo!"

"No! Don't listen to that moogle—I know whom he serves!" interjected a female voice—a caravanner named Yufina. She had recognized the moogle as Artemicion, the moogle who traveled with an infamous band of thieves known as the Striped Brigands. For all anyone knew, and she certainly suspected, this was a trick intended as part of a ploy by the brigands to steal whatever they could get their sticky fingers around.

Artemicion drew back several inches with a betrayed look on his face. "But it's true!" he pleaded. "Alfitaria needs help! Kupo! You've got to help!"

Yufina looked at Amidatty from under her sallet, and then at fellow caravanners Bessamzan and Leonamiel. Even if it was true, and Alfitaria was indeed under attack, what should they care? The Lilties of Alfitaria had always been the enemy intent on conquest, and especially the enemy of the Yukes of Shella, for in the days of old the Yukes alone were able to resist the advancing Liltian armies by their magical prowess.

Bessamzan, however, shook his head at Yufina as if able to read exactly this thought on her mind. "We cannot hold the past against the people of Alfitaria now in their time of need," he told the caravan. "The monsters make their hardest hammer-stroke against the Lilty people now, but in truth their menace threatens all the peoples of this world. We must stop them quickly, before they can threaten others."

All it took was Amidatty's raising of a hammer to call the Shella caravanners to arms, into their wagon to ride into battle against the demon that sought to destroy all that the four peoples of this world held dear, with the tiny striped moogle following in their wake.

Already the edges of the proud Lilty city were crumbling under the onslaught of monsters that attacked. Raem, meanwhile, had taken to merely circling above Alfitaria to watch in amusement as the citizens struggled to defend their home.

Suddenly Raem's eye caught a movement just beyond the canals to the south—that of two Selkies, both wearing stripes similar to the moogle Artemicion's, who tried to escape the melee. He fired a laser-beam of evil energy at the escaping pair, which detonated like a bomb blast, killing the older man instantly and throwing the younger man into the canal.

The younger Selkie, whose name was Bal Dat, was able to swim to the shore fairly easily—Selkies were naturally excellent swimmers. Frantically, Bal Dat looked about in search of some means of either escape or of fending off the onslaught of monsters. At last he caught sight of a Lilty girl snatching up the spear of a fallen countryman and spinning it wildly at an attacking griffin, more bodies of slain Alfitaria denizens scattered nearby. Bal Dat picked up a hatchet from the hand of a slain Clavat boy and hurled it at the griffin. Very luckily, the hatchet hit its mark, burying itself in the middle of the monster's head to kill it.

"Thanks! Name's Elspeth, by the way, but you can call me Ellie," the Lilty girl piped up.

"Bal Dat," the Selkie answered in reply, quickly clasping Elspeth's outstretched hand—and just as quickly yanking her to the ground to evade the ice-breath blast of a gargoyle swooping down on the scene. "What was that thing?" he cried out in alarm once the monster had passed over them.

Elspeth found another spear and tossed it to Bal Dat. "Whatever they are, we have to fight them! We can't let these miasma-beasts take the city!" she called out, not only to Bal Dat but to everyone else in earshot. Soon she rallied a force of almost thirty citizens that had taken up weapons to combat a score of lizardmen now attacking the southwest edge of the city. A family of Yukes cast spells to defeat the enemies, while those with no magical aptitude fought with any weapon that they happened to pick up.

Raem circled and watched in amusement as everywhere citizens of Elspeth's bravery assembled groups of townsfolk to fight the legions of monsters. Even as the citizens beat back the monsters that attacked the outskirts, whenever enough of them fell in battle, Raem would then use their painful memories to form the miasmal remains of slain monsters into still-stronger minions: behemoths, death-knights, cerberi, and chimeras. These minions then wreaked havoc closer to the center of Alfitaria, where guards and soldiers struggled valiantly against them.

Suddenly, however, a violent crash descended upon the southwest edge of the city: the Yukes of Shella had arrived and brought Raem down with a powerful Graviga spell. But even on the ground the demon brought death upon the masses with his laser and bubbles of evil energy, crushing small buildings with the ends of his wings. The Lilty girl Elspeth threw her spear at Raem and succeeded in wounding him slightly, but met instant death for her effort: Raem made a swipe of his wing that flung her headfirst into the wall of the southern canal.

Bal Dat's horrified cry died in his throat as Raem took to the sky again. He just managed to dodge a fireball the demon aimed in his direction, but the bubble of flames hit a collection of what appeared to be market-stall tents, scattering burning wood and shrapnel everywhere. The redheaded Selkie tried to hide behind a section of broken wall but was soon knocked unconscious as more of the wall fell down and nearly buried him.

The fight that raged throughout Alfitaria continued until sundown and well into the night…until Raem realized that the miasma around the city was becoming too thin to draw together and form into monsters. The vale and the area around Shella and the sluice had, in one short day of vicious fighting, run dry of monsters—could it be that mortals had it in them to prevail when they united, even against one as powerful as he? Was it possible that the angels in Lady Mio's service fought among the Alfitarians today?

At last the demon retreated to Moschet Manor and, settling into the courtyard, tried to rethink things. The citizens of Alfitaria, aided in small part by the caravans of Marr's Pass and Shella, had united against the onslaught of Raem's minions—and with the Meteor Parasite destroyed, there was no longer enough miasma for monsters to continue bearing down on the city, at least not on the north part of the continent. Raem clamped his beak in outrage—this was not to be borne! He needed a greater source of pain, one that could enable him to form monsters without the miasma. Perhaps then, with his power thus bolstered, even the Lady Mio and her angels would be powerless to stop his reign of terror upon the four races of mortals! But who among mortals bore a memory painful enough to increase his power so?

Raem then remembered one—such a victim dwelled in the crossroads-town of Marr's Pass, and as it seemed, no angel protected her against misfortune. He would find her and harvest the painful memory she bore, and with his power thus magnified, he would become completely invincible, and bring suffering and death upon the entire mortal realm! Exulting in his brilliance, Raem spread his wings and started flying southward to Marr's Pass.

_**A/N:** The battle against Raem is not officially over; I will be continuing it in my fic **Sword of Redemption** that features a crossover with another _Final Fantasy_ game. Henceforth, however, chapters in this story will pertain chiefly to the aftermath and the new Golden Age beginning to rise._


End file.
